Average Dad (Pilot)

A suburban dad runs a black-ops morning routine — balcony pipe, breath spray, asthma puffer, aftershave, ninja-jog back to bed — to keep one small secret from his very pregnant wife.

The story

Adam is an average dad with an above-average concealment routine. The pilot opens on his choreographed morning: weed from a tic-tac box, a balcony pipe, then the full counter-forensics pass — peppermint spray, asthma puffer, aftershave — before a ninja-jog back under the doona to feign sleep as his heavily-pregnant wife Harmony emerges from the ensuite. She’s almost always a beat ahead of him. Average Dad is a grounded, dry, faintly dark domestic comedy about the distance between the father a man performs and the one he actually is — with a baby (and a widening web of small lies) on the way to raise the stakes.

Coverage — plot points

• Adam’s elaborate concealment ritual opens the pilot — comedy of tiny logistics.
• Harmony, heavily pregnant, is one beat ahead of him more often than he knows.
• The gap between the dad Adam performs and the one he is drives every scene.
• Impending fatherhood raises the stakes on a very small, very human deceit.

Read the sample

Below is the existing draft — a sample of the final shooting script (28pp shown). Scroll to read, or download the PDF.

⬇ Download sample PDF